Artificial Intelligence in The Workplace: Friend or Foe?

When it comes to the topic of artificial intelligence, it seems to be affecting many industries to the point where some people don’t feel secure or comfortable in their roles. The topic has turned from a great tool to make processes more efficient and reduce time scales into a complete replacement of human skill and mind. The workplace is a difficult conversation because there is no guarantee or straight answer about which jobs are next on the chopping block. 

People tend to fear what they don’t understand and the media and stressed conversations between strangers and colleagues don’t make things any easier. A reasonable middle ground has been absent from these talks, and in situations such as these, viewpoint is crucial. While that’s not to say it’s an application in workplaces such as healthcare, it’s a great relief that they’ve been able to establish a middle ground. I doubt AI will completely remove the skills of human surgeons but rather act as a way of supporting them.

Ultimately, four years ago, who would have thought that the world's shift to remote work would have been as successful as it was? That is not to minimise the intense workload and difficulties that teams in IT, HR, and cybersecurity bravely take on. In actuality, though, we all had to make the new normal work. Even though futurology and stargazing are deeply ingrained in human nature, it's usually preferable to learn how to adapt to the changing world in the workplace. 

Don’t Forget The Human Touch

The advancements in technology are coming quicker than ever, to think Less than 20 years ago, the first iPhone was released and now we have technology almost everywhere and in everything, to the point where it’s putting people on edge about their jobs. While technology replacing jobs isn’t new to humanity, from industrial machines to AI, it’s something we’ve become accustomed to, especially with the help of sci-fi films. Technically, all the signs were there.

Humanity has this god-like sense of technology but you always need to remember their maker; it was us so with that comes human error. Nothing is ever without pitfalls and it’s always best to look at the grand scheme of things rather than just let panic set in and assume that AI is here to replace rather than work alongside. There is something that AI cannot master and that is humans' uniqueness and pure authenticity. While it could do its best based on data analysis and so forth, there is something so powerful about the human mind. There are still so many questions we don’t know about how people think and while there are a million and one theories and people are trained in understanding human behaviour, there is never a definitive answer.

Ultimately, AI doesn't embody everything unique about a human, and while it’s very good at giving it a go, it’s not what is successful for many things. In all seriousness, both humans and AI together have the power to make a business successful if there is a healthy balance between the two. It should be utilised throughout and this can have huge benefits for a range of different sectors, such as healthcare, business and even the fast food industry. Putting together a work plan integrating AI smoothly into the team could improve things like time management, deadlines and the overall quality of work.

The modern worker is tech-aware and more astute than ever in discerning what they want from their work environment. Businesses continue to suffer greatly from severe talent scarcity and a lack of skills, so it is crucial to create the conditions for success now. To make sure that businesses are operating at full capacity, this entails a strategy that carefully strikes a balance between tech solutions and real human interaction.

How Do We Find a Middle Ground?

When we think about integrating AI into the job, the first step would be adding personalisation and a human touch to it in hopes of reaching a secure middle ground. One of the things that AI cannot master is human support, conversations and a level of empathy that are needed in many fields like sales, customer service, credit insurance and retail. Not only that, but the ability to analyse large amounts of data can help companies like investment fraud lawyers, WRS, cybersecurity and digital marketing companies analyse huge amounts of data. This is an advantage and these factors help the company and cannot replace their role and other responsibilities.

It’s important to note that a tech company should never replace the whole of human skill. For example, when your computer crashes right before a meeting or big online conference, who are you going to rely on and seek help from? Chapt GPT? Googles Gemini? No, you are going to want to communicate the issue with a human tech specialist and hope they can get things up and running without constant back-and-forth explaining to a computer what is going on when a human could understand and fix it with their remote access.

We shouldn’t forget that AI implementation isn’t an overnight thing and takes a lot of trial and error for a business. Finding areas where it works and others where it’s obsolete, there is evidence to suggest that AI is slowly becoming a friend in the workplace rather than a foe. While that’s not to say employees are still scared, there is still room for jobs. For example, there are expectations in the future for train conductors to eventually become obsolete due to AI driving the trains. While this is great for a range of things, such as less late and cancelled trains due to human error, this puts hundreds of thousands at risk. Although there will always be tech issues, it’s just what happens; therefore, there will be opportunities for train conductors to train and become AI specialists or as human reserves in case of any issues.

Overall, AI should be used as a tool to make staff’s jobs easier to an extent, where they can prioritise more important tasks and let AI do the rest. It seems that AI is being used as a scare tactic and there is no guarantee that in the future some jobs will be replaced or changed to adapt to these technologies.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to establishing if AI is a friend or foe, we can assure that there will be no dramatic changes in the coming years but there is still a question for the future. Employees need to be reassured that their jobs in sectors such as export credit insurance, software coders and all things digital are currently safe, but expect changes.